Harbor Freight Predator - The XS of small engines

[Downeaster]

Some years back, I got REALLY tired of wimpy snowblowers that would bog down in anything other than a few inches of light fluffy stuff. A friend had an 8/24 blower with a blown up Briggs and Scrapiron on it that he just wanted gone.

I have a torch and a welder, so... I sprung for a 13 horse electric start Predator engine from Harbor Freight and commenced shade-tree engineering it onto the blower chassis. Not terribly complex, made a subframe to move the engine up and back so the pulleys lined up and moved the blower chute crank out a ways to clear the engine, whipped up a battery tray and mount.

It's a snowblowing Esso Bee and I've never managed to stop it. In fact, it rarely ever kicked the governor in. Of course once I had it built Glow Bull War Ming kicked in and we haven't had a Winter worth the name in 5 or 6 years.

I know for a fact it hasn't been used in at least two years and probably longer. We got 6 or 8 inches over the last couple of days, enough to put the big blower on the Cabota and clear out the driveway and in front of the garage. Rather than run the tractor across the back lawn for the path to the shop, I decided to dig the Binford 6000 out and see if it would start.

Hooked my pocket-sized jump pack onto it (another amazing bit of technology), turned on the (2+ year old) gas, choked it and hit the starter. It took maybe 30 seconds to kick over and another minute on half-choke and high idle to warm up and away we went.

Can't say that for ANY Briggs/Tecumseh I've ever owned, and darn few Hondas. The GX yes, the GC on my pressure washer? It was a miracle if that POS started at all, much less easily. It got replaced with a Predator too.

 

[kshansen]

Over on the Snow Blower forum there are a few that have used the smaller Harbor Fright motors to replace old Tecumshes with good luck.

A few years back I repowered a pair of my snow blowers with Briggs 15C 107 engines that I got from an outfit that sells left over stock motors online. Those are overhead valve engines designed for snow blowers with the 120 Volt starters. The starters are almost never used as the engines start 98% of the time with two hits of the primer, choke on and one easy pull on the starter rope. Used to be hard starting and rough running first uses in winter but this year I made it a habit to start about once a month and let run a couple minutes and kept the tanks full of gas.

 

[Kevin Werner]

I ran my 21' 1 stage a month ago after carb cleaning. I was flawless. Last week it refused to run off choke. My driveway is small enough that small single stage is entirely adequate, Fernando, neighbor came over with his 2 stage. We are good neughbors even though I can't understand most of what he says....

 

[gggGary]

We are good neughbors even though I can't understand most of what he says....

Maybe that's WHY you are good neighbors? ;^)

I'm sold on predators, replaced a blown 18HP Briggs on a zero turn with a 21HP Predator vertical shaft. Big improvement, was still running great when i sold the mower after several years.